Various abbreviations that appear in the specification and/or in the drawing figures are defined as below:                3GPP Third Generation Partnership Project        LTE Long Term Evolution        BS Base Station        MS Mobile Station        MME Mobility Management Entity        UE User Equipment        IMSI International Mobile Subscriber Identity        ASME Access Security Management Entity        TMSI Temporary Mobile Subscriber Identity        MTC Machine Type Communication        HSS Home Subscriber Server        IMEI International Mobile Equipment Identity        AV Authentication Vector        USIM Universal Subscriber Identity Module        AUTN Authentication Token        RAND Random Challenge        GPRS General Packet Radio Service        SGSN Serving GPRS Support Node        XRES Expected Response        CK Cipher Key        IK Integrity Key        AK Anonymity Key        XMAC Expected Message Authentication Code        MAC Message Authentication Code        AuC Authentication Center        AKA Authentication and Key Agreement        
An AKA procedure is a procedure that has been employed by many communication systems of today for the purpose of improving system security and robustness. One such an AKA procedure has been detailed in 3GPP Technical Specifications 33.102 and 33.401, which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety. The AKA procedure, which may involve a challenge-response authentication procedure as known in the art, will inevitably cause certain amount of signaling overhead. When the number of devices to be authenticated in the AKA procedure is relatively low, it will merely cause small amount of overhead for the network. However, in a situation where devices to be simultaneously authenticated are numerous, it will generate tremendous signaling overhead that may burden the bandwidth and processing capability of the network. This is especially true for machine-type communications in which many MTC devices formed in groups will initiate their own AKA procedures towards the network simultaneously and thereby make negative impact on the network. For more information regarding MTC communications, see 3GPP Technical Report 33.868, which is also incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Therefore, what is needed in the prior art is means for performing a group AKA procedure on a group of devices in an efficient and secure manner such that the impact of signaling overhead on the network could be decreased.